Bucheon Residency 2020

With the aims to increase international exchange and communication and contribute to the mobility of writers, translators, and cartoonists, our first residency program was launched in March, 2020. The lucky winners of the program were Rory Waterman, from our sister UNESCO City of Literature, Nottingham and Jeff Noh from Montreal, Creative City of Design.

Rory Waterman and Jeff Noh came to Bucheon for a six-week writing residency in this Fall. We were very grateful that the residency continued although we had to carefully monitor the circumstances due to the impact of COVID-19 to make this possible.

Apart from their residential duties, these two residents did a lot of exploring Bucheon and Korea while focusing on their own work. For example, Jeff, a writer of the Korean diaspora, made visits to Icheon, Creative City of Crafts and Folk Art to meet with Ceramic artists and to the Cheongju Early Printing Museum for his research, which will be very helpful for the novel he is currently working at.

Also, Rory made visits to different observatories in the DMZ including several locations important to his research such as Abai Island in Sokcho, the Sokcho Displaced Civilians Folk Village, Seodaemun Prison, the site of the Incheon Landings, the War Memorial of Korea, and the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History. 

We really hope that the things and places they have experienced in Bucheon will feed into their future work!